McCain's misbehavior forced him to take public financing, not his honor. McCain is paying for trying to make public financing his collateral for a loan taken out to support his then ailing bid for the Republican Nomination. If he hadn't succeeded, he would have then accepted public financing, and used that to pay off his campaign debts.

He did succeed though, and then spent and fundraised as if he wasn't going to accept public financing. Only problem being, of course, that he was too clever by half on that account. The FEC ruled that because he had made those overtures in the primary election, he was bound to such financing in the general.

Otherwise, McCain was going to go Obama's route. However, he would do so with about half of his money coming from those giving the maximum.

The whole point of campaign finance reform, which McCain wrote into law in its current form, which Obama has followed, was to lessen the influence of special interests, of large donors, to keep their influence from being a secret. Obama has done right by the intentions of that law.

The trick of Obama's performance on fundraising is that he has obligated himself, for the most part, to millions of supporters more than he's obligated him to a few rich folks. Look at McCain's proportions, and they are a mirror image of Obama's, half his donations from a relatively scarce collection of rich donors, with only a third of his money coming from small donors.

If we ask the question "who's paying for this election?", then with Obama we can say "millions of supporters."

Only a third of Obama's supporters have maxed out their contributions, which means a vast majority of Obama's donors have the capability to donate more, a factor that's kept his campaign swimming in dough. To be quite frank about it, Obama's campaign has proven to be an enormously positive test case for a fundraising model that relies on grassroots support. It's long been theoretically possible, but for years the paradigm has been that it's easier to raise money from rich folks.

I mean really consider it: Obama raised almost as much small donor money as McCain raised altogether, and total, his contributions are staggering in their size and implications. Obama proved that a campaign that didn't depend on PACs or lobbyists could not only survive, but thrive.

But McCain's response? Evil small donors. They could be terrorists, socialists, evildoers. And Obama in accepting funds from one of the most Democratic hauls of donations in modern American political history has broken faith with the people.

McCain, though, having gamed the system and gotten stuck in its gears is cursing and belittling the person who made McCain's system work so well and work like it was supposed to.

What better evidence of the hollowness of McCain's reform credentials. Apparently, McCain only believes in its so long as he's winning an election with it, and not being shown up by the whippersnapper. But when its the average person paying a great deal of the bill for a candidate's campaign, rather than taxpayers or McCain's big donors, apparently McCain's respect for such campaign finance reform evaporates.

Obama may very well be able to win this election because of his fundraising, but if anybody is buying the White House, it's his millions of donors, lettting their money talk.

The 150 million raised by Obama in September included almost 700 thousand who had not donated before and the average donation was 86 dollars per donor. But no one needs take my word for it…just check out what George Will had to say:

So now money is speech, when its coming from the little guy? I thought dems wanted public financing of elections. I seem to remember Obama supporting this…until it became more convenient not to. I’m no fan of McCain,(I happen to be one of Obama’s small donors) but either dems should accept money as speech as Obama has done, or go for full public financing. If they try going for public financing later when it is more advantageous to them, I’ll call foul.

Calvin-
The point of public financing was to remove more of the big money out of politics. But if you can do that by other means, private means, why not do it that way?

McCain, though, did not play his game with public financing in order to get big money out of his politics. He did it to get a big loan whose collateral would be taxpayer dollars. And after that, has he sought small donors? No, he’s gotten half his donations from big donors donating the maximums.

McCain put his hand in the cookie jar and got it stuck. Obama vastly expanded his donor base, followed the rules for that, and decided not to get public financing in light of his extraordinary success raising money from small donors.

I think Obama’s opened his campaign enough to the average person’s donations to make up for not taking public financing.

The money as speech thing…when it was decided that corporations had the same citizenship rights as real citizens, the corporations immediately took advantage and used their new-found ‘freedom of speech’ to buy every politician with a pocket to put money in. As citizens, we have always exercised the right to free speech by donating to our political favorites…I think there is a difference…how much influence do you think an $86.00 donor will have on public policy because of his/her donation? Now compare that to the corporation that can put thousands or even millions out there to influence their wants.

We really need to get rid of the ‘corporate citizen thing, or perish. Limitations may not be free, but sometimes limitations are best for freedom.

Y’know, I was listening to neo-con radio host Mark Levin last night, and he was endlessly ranting about Obama’s fundraising success, and how Obama would surely bring a culture of nepotism and lack of oversight to Washington.

Y’know, it sure sounded like Levin was insanely jealous of Obama’s fundraising, and on the nepotism and lack of oversight…he’s accusing Obama already of something the Republicans have done for the past eight years????

This all goes back to one of the observations I’ve made of the hard-line Republicans and neo-cons: They always accuse others of nothing more than they have already done (to a much greater extent).

You are right, and even their hero Ronnie Reagan was guilty of that to a degree, but since the so-called Republican revolt, with the ‘contract for America’, Newt & Company got really serious with it. Rove has honed it to a fine edge…do unspeakable evil, and then point to the opposition, and blame them for that very evil. No one has ever done it better than Karl…

SE-
The Obama campaign has raised 600,000,000 dollars, and you’re concerned about some foreigner stupid enough to commit fraud with a traceable credit card trying to influence him 20 anonymous dollars at a time?

Serious manipulation of the system would require serious numbers of people, coordinated and maintaining complete secrecy. They’d have to arrange for thousands of credit cards, or otherwise risk making a bunch of donations on a few cards and just announcing what they were doing.

Do you honestly believe somebody could pull of a plot like this and not get caught?

This came back to my mind because a couple of days ago, Jesse Jackson Jr said that he should be appointed to replace BHO in the Senate in order to “maintain diversity”. I hope our idiot governor appoints Tammy Duckworth now, if BHO manages to get elected. I have him at 180 assured electoral votes, up from 38 previous to the “economic crisis”.

There have been 70,000 invitations given out to a victory rally here next Tuesday, where 1 million people are expected to show up, but BHO might not show up. Hijinks may ensue.

On the prime time commercial, can you say bloviate
–verb (used without object), to speak pompously. Origin:
1850–55, Americanism; pseudo-L alter. of blow to boast; popularized by W. G. Harding.

Chicago is called the windy city because of our politicians, not the weather.

I maintain my point. If money is speech for little guys, at what point does it stop being speech? Can you regulate it for larger donors? Even if we agree that corporations are not people, rich people are. I still think its inconsistent that dems supported public financing…until their fundraising wonder comes along. If and when it gets brought up again every rep/con on here will point to this election, and they’ll have a point.

The only winner has been Islamic militancy. That’s probably the core reason why Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers.

If we were to insert Obama’s name here for McCains the right would immediately promote this as proof that Obama associates with known terrorists. So I guess it is only fair to assume the same for McCain. But then that just seems kind of silly and stupid doesn’t it.

Most of Islam will have a good first impression of Obama…but NOT Iran, and NOT Iraq.

Why?

‘Hussein’ is a name you will almost never find in a Shi’a community. ‘Hussein’ was the name of the Sunni who led the slaughter of the first 72 Shi’a martyrs about 1500 years ago.

Now most of us would think it’s silly to worry about a name from 1500 years ago…but it matters to the Shi’a. Besides - how many Americans would name their kid ‘Pontius’ or ‘Benedict’? Iran and Iraq will be uncomfortable with Barack Hussein Obama at best.

Calvin said:
Sicilian Eagle
It occurs to me that a terrorist would be far more likely to want to contribute to McCain’s campaign, seeing as Bush’s policies have done wonders for their recruiting. Al Qaeda endorses McCain:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26kristof.html?em
Now, it appears we have a real problem. Nicholas D. Kristof is either lying or he has misunderstood his information. Because we have another report, dated 5 days later, that says Al Qaeda leaders would not support either man, because any endorsement would legitimize a government (American) who they believe is corrupt. Furthermore, Al Qaeda has prayed for God’s humiliation to come upon Bush.

“DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda leader has called for President George W. Bush and the Republicans to be “humiliated,” without endorsing a party in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, according to an Internet video posting.
“O God, humiliate Bush and his party, O Lord of the Worlds, degrade and defy him,” Abu Yahya al-Libi said at the end of sermon marking the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, in a video posted on the Internet.
Libi, a top al Qaeda commander believed to be living in Afghanistan or Pakistan, called for God’s wrath to be brought against Bush equating him with past tyrants in history.
The remarks were the first from a leading al Qaeda figure referring, albeit indirectly, to the U.S. elections. Muslim clerics often end sermons by calling on God to guide and support Muslims and help defeat their enemies.
Terrorism monitor SITE Intelligence Group said in a report on Wednesday that militants on al Qaeda-linked websites have for months been debating the significance of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama or Republican John McCain.
Some posters have also argued over the merits of trying to attack the United States before the election or waiting until later, the report said.
But SITE said it did not expect al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or deputy Ayman al-Zawahri to openly favor a candidate.
“To support a particular candidate would debase al-Qaeda’s long-standing argument that the United States government is a corrupt institution no matter who is at the helm,” SITE director Rita Katz said in the group’s November newsletter.”

It is ironic to me that the McCain campaign has been saying that it is un-American for people who have wealth to be asked to pay more in taxes, yet when Obama raises a ton of money for his campaign; it is considered un-American for him to use it because he is “buying the election”

Secondly, is McCain really closing his national campaign with some guy named Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin? If that’s the best he can do than that is really sad.

The Obama campaign has raised 600,000,000 dollars, and you’re concerned about some foreigner stupid enough to commit fraud with a traceable credit card trying to influence him 20 anonymous dollars at a time?

Stephen, foreigners aren’t subject to any penalties for committing fraud in a US election. I’m surprised that you’d make such a fundamental error as assuming that the US has jurisdiction over foreigners. Why would a foreigner even care about possibly being accused of committing fraud?

Serious manipulation of the system would require serious numbers of people, coordinated and maintaining complete secrecy. They’d have to arrange for thousands of credit cards, or otherwise risk making a bunch of donations on a few cards and just announcing what they were doing.

This is baloney. It wouldn’t require serious numbers of people at all—it would only require those who are involved to “launder” this money through several identities. You could do it as fast as you can think up new names and keep hitting enter on Obama’s site. And perhaps there are serious numbers of people doing it—that would only magnify the extent of the fraud to perhaps obscene levels.

“Maintaining secrecy” is no challenge at all since there is no oversight and no effort on the part of Obama campaign to prevent this behavior.

Obama is accepting UNTRACEABLE donations, meaning that ANYBODY can in effect donate as much money as they want if they go around the system, which Obama, in unprecedented fashion, has made it very easy to do.

Obama, unlike the McCain campaign, is also accepting prepaid credit cards, and not bothering to match the names and addresses on them with the names that are attached to the donations.

Obama, also unlike McCain, does not require donors to enter the three digit security code on credit cards. No only does this open the door to even more fraud, it is a clear VIOLATION of the rules for internet purchases with credit cards over the internet.

Here’s a question for you: Can you name even ONE website anywhere on the internet besides Obama’s which does not require you to enter that three digit security code? Does it not interest you even a little why this might be?

According to that article, Obama’s campaign has taken the novel position that it is illegal to MAKE fraudulent campaign donations but not illegal to ACCEPT them.

I’m surprised that Obama supporters are defending the indefensible here. Does it not bother you at all that all transparency about who is donating to campaigns has gone out the window here. It’s okay with you for a candidate to accept completely untraceable donations? Where is the transparency in that, or is it just that you don’t care if it’s you’re guy who is the one benefiting from potentially massive fraud?

Marysdude, href=”http://postbiblical.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=124&Itemid=32”>here is how it’s being done.

I have doubts about whether impeachment is possible in the event of a president whose party controls both branches of Congress. But in the event of an Obama win, this is going to be a huge story in coming months, and one which would weaken Obama politically before he even took office.

Here’s something to watch for: Obama denying any personal knowledge or responsibility for the actions of those who worked for him. Should that be the case, it will be necessary to point out that his defense was not accepted from George Bush when it came to Katrina, Abu Ghraib, or any number of issues. The buck stops at the top. And if Obama wanted to use the same defense for an Obama administration as he uses for his campaign, then we’d be in more a scandal-plagued four years.

Why would the left be concerned about BHO’s campaign money? They don’t care about anything else he has been involved in or has done. They don’t care who has been involved with or what those people have done. It doesn’t matter who he is or what he will do to this country as long as he wins, as long as he replaces that evil Bush.

The left can’t get over it; the blue dress is brought up again. IT WAS ABOUT LYING UNDER OATH. You might as well talk to the wall as to discuss the “rule of law” with a lib. In their opinion, laws were made to be broken.

Tom:

“Secondly, is McCain really closing his national campaign with some guy named Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin? If that’s the best he can do than that is really sad.”

Yea, isn’t it disgusting that common, everyday, working people would be part of his campaign? What is the world coming to.

These @$$40!35 don’t deserve to have their efforts dignified with anything else but a bipartisan consensus to kick their asses. We had that on Afghanistan, but y’all had a bit too much energy and far too much confidence in al-Qaeda’s demise. Somebody like Bin Laden, you don’t leave them alive out in the field. You either kill them, or you put them in jail for life.

These guys should have been old news quite some time ago. Americans would not have tired of Bush chasing Bin Laden to the ends of the earth, like they did of him chasing the WMDs.

How much better respected the Bush Administration would had been if it just stuck to the sons of bitches who actually killed three thousand Americans. It’s not that complicated.

If you’re through exploiting the scary aura of the folks your people failed to utterly defeat, I’m going to move on.

LO-

Lawyers for the Obama operation said yesterday that their “extensive back-end review” has carefully scrubbed contributions to prevent illegal money from entering the operation’s war chest. “I’m pretty sure if I took my error rate and matched it against any other campaign or comparable nonprofit, you’d find we’re doing very well,” said Robert Bauer, a lawyer for the campaign. “I have not seen the McCain compliance staff ascending to heaven on a cloud.”

The Obama team’s disclosures came in response to questions from The Washington Post about the case of Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, Mo., who turned up on Obama’s FEC reports as having donated $174,800 to the campaign. Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election.

Biskup, who had scores of Obama contributions attributed to her, said in an interview that she never donated to the candidate. “That’s an error,” she said. Moreover, she added, her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card.

When asked whether the campaign takes steps to verify whether a donor’s name matches the name on the credit card used to make a payment, Obama’s campaign replied in an e-mail: “Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this.

“Instead, the campaign does a rigorous comprehensive analysis of online contributions on the back end of the transaction to determine whether a contribution is legitimate.”

They’re not stupid. They’re not looking for a scandal in the making.

Besides, I would be careful about singing the praises of the bullet proof McCain Campaign:

Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s communication’s director, said that “no organization can fully insulate itself from these problems. The McCain campaign has accepted contributions from fraudulent contributors like ‘A for You,’ ‘Adorable Manabat,’ ‘The Gun Shop,’ and ‘Jesus II’ and hundreds of anonymous donors.”

Oh, what can we do about this? Well we can change the law later to better regulate this. There’s no need to get in the way of average people giving to the candidates.

But in the mean time? Like the guy says:

Election lawyer Brett Kappel said the FEC has never grappled with the question of cash cards. “The whole system is set up for them to accept the payment, then determine whether it is legal or not. And if it’s not, send it back. That’s what the statute requires,” he said.

In short, you bring them in, determine whether they’re legitimate, then put them in the campaign treasury.

Leave it to Republicans to dump on the middle class and inspire mistrust in small donors in favor of those with more money.

I got news for you: knowing about arugula is not the defining characteristic of elitism.

Lawyers for the Obama operation said yesterday that their “extensive back-end review” has carefully scrubbed contributions to prevent illegal money from entering the operation’s war chest. “I’m pretty sure if I took my error rate and matched it against any other campaign or comparable nonprofit, you’d find we’re doing very well,” said Robert Bauer, a lawyer for the campaign. “I have not seen the McCain compliance staff ascending to heaven on a cloud.”

The Obama team’s disclosures came in response to questions from The Washington Post about the case of Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, Mo., who turned up on Obama’s FEC reports as having donated $174,800 to the campaign. Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election.

Biskup, who had scores of Obama contributions attributed to her, said in an interview that she never donated to the candidate. “That’s an error,” she said. Moreover, she added, her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card.

When asked whether the campaign takes steps to verify whether a donor’s name matches the name on the credit card used to make a payment, Obama’s campaign replied in an e-mail: “Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this.

“Instead, the campaign does a rigorous comprehensive analysis of online contributions on the back end of the transaction to determine whether a contribution is legitimate.”

I’m a common everyday working person, but I would find it disturbing if my future president asked me to speak to the American people regarding policy. I would hope they would have someone more knowledgeable about the complicated issues that we face in this country than to simply ask some guy they saw on TV.

Also I really don’t feel bad for people making more than $200,000 and I don’t consider them just common ordinary people. What I can’t believe is that some of them actually have the nerve to whine about paying a little bit more in taxes. Boo Hoo!

Oldguy
How dreadful, the Saudis support Obama…along with the rest of the world, except maybe Israel. And Israel only likes McCain cause they’re more sure he’ll keep their steady supply of cluster bombs coming. Since when is it a bad thing to elect a president who might possibly have some common ground with muslims? You know, the people we’re trying to keep from becoming terrorists?

Also, regardless of news articles, I stand by the point that McCain makes more strategic sense for terrorists, since he will likely continue the Bush policies of generally disregarding muslims. It is this same tendency that likely leads to muslim support for Obama.

As for Hamas nominally supporting Obama, he is more likely to support Palestinians over Israelis. Hamas perhaps hopes to gain from this, though I doubt Obama will have anything to do with them.

Now that we know McCain has the support of Al Quiada can we expect rumors of personal terrorist associations. Can he really be trusted? Has he accepted any donations from them? How has he managed to hide this information for so long? If elected will he continue to support their efforts by remaining in Iraq? Just how long has he had these ties? Imagine the possibilities if we on the left had our own media network and the lack of necessary integrity to propagate this kind of classless bulls*%t.

Oldguy-
The place collapsed in civil warfare and sectarian division under us. They may be somewhat grateful about Saddam, (if they aren’t Sunni) but I’m sure nobody’s grateful for the way the place cratered.

So spin this: Why did it take so long just to get the violence under control? And why did the Republicans have to lose an election to change direction in the war?

Can America afford any more learning curves like this? People so hawkishly dedicated to a strategy that they can’t fix their mistakes in time to set things right?

No matter how things are going in Iraq…no matter how they go in the future…it will always be known, by everyone in the world, that it happened and is happening because of dishonorable acts. A stain on America, far worse than any stain on a blue dress, and this stain has caused death and destruction untold.

Afghanistan was and may still be honorable. It won’t be honorable forever, but it may still be. When/if we get ben Ladin, we must help put the country back together, in order to keep it honorable, but Iraq can NEVER be considered honorable. Cheney/Bush has just about finished our high position in the world of nations. mccain would not even know he needed to address that problem, let alone be able to do anything about it. Hopefully, Obama sees it, and will attempt to repair some of it…perhaps he will ask Bill Clinton to help him in this endeavor.

We are attempting to get to sixty seats in the Senate…we are losing Obama and Biden…can we afford to lose Hill as well? I know it ain’t fair, and she’d do us a world of good in the administration…but, she’d maybe serve a higher purpose by staying in her seat???

oldguy, I guess you folks are going to hang onto that surge like the 2nd. coming. Oh well….
dude…..thanks for shattering that idea.. ;) Poop…I didn’t think about that. Well, with all the endorsements he has gotten from many impressive people, he surely has given consideration beyond just that. I’m impressed with his wisdom, so there is no reason to think he would make a Sarah Palin choice.

>I believe success began when the surge started. The surge that McCain proposed and BHO rejected.
Posted by: Oldguy at November 1, 2008 12:48 PM

Old,

And, the UNsuccess started with the dishonorable invasion, and will end when we give the country back to the Iraqis. The great ‘surge’ is a blip on the screen of war, and has no real significance in ‘winning’ which we cannot do, no matter what happens, and losing, which we did the day we entered a sovereign nation without justification.

Oldguy-
McCain proposed putting more soldiers in. The strategy, particularly the parts that worked, and the circumstances that worked in our favor had little to do with that.

If circumstances were really as stabilized as you claim, we’d be leaving a hell of a lot faster than this. And yes, leaving is the ultimate test of success. If you can’t leave, you haven’t really won the war.

Which reminds me: most places where we’ve left behind a residual presence are places where we gained new allies and positioned assets strategically to fight our new enemies. Only in Korea did we leave soldiers where we failed to win, and there we left the soldiers having brokered a peace agreement that meant they weren’t staying in the midst of an active shooting war.